Sports Staturday: Sip Some Coffee And Recap The Last Week In Sports With Some Wild And Irreverent Stats
Welcome back to all of you who read last week's Sports Staturday blog. If you're new stumbling in here all blurry-eyed from hopefully a good Halloween night out the idea is to have a little walk through the past week in sports through wild, dumb, or otherwise irreverent stats. Something to flow through for a few mild morning chuckles while you sip your morning coffee or whatever else. I'm pushing myself to try this out consistently to see if people like it and got enough encouragement last week (two comments!) to not only run it back, but to touch up my self-made (ChatGPT/Canva combo) logo.
Get those thumbs ready. One on the mug handle. The other ready to scroll. This is Sports Staturday.
We once again are left with no choice but to start with Shohei Ohtani, who simply could not get one goddamn break after a plate appearance to go sit down and chill with his buds on the bench in Game 3's marathon 18 inning thriller.
Ronald Martinez. Getty Images.The only other player you could really imagine reaching base nine times with five walks in baseball history is Barry Bonds. Imagine how funny it'd have been to see him take the mound and show us what he's got. Would he even be able to raise his hand above his shoulders? It's just crazy to think that's what baseball fans have in Shohei. He can do everything. But that doesn't mean he's without any weakness! Evidently, there is one.
Dude evidently LOVES to sleep.
Very smart of Toronto to use that against him by making him play two games in one right before a pitching day. I wouldn't say Shohei was terrible on the mound in Game 4, but he got touched up and took the L.
I do want to play a little stat experiment before moving on. What are the odds of reaching base all nine times in a game? Forget how rare it is to have the opportunity. And let's use Ted Williams as an example and just say he has a career .482 OBP.
.482 to the 9th power gives odds of this happening of .14%. So about 1 in 714 or to convert it to gambling odds like a true degen makes a nice little +71,300 parlay hit. Again that's assuming a Ted Williams career OBP.
Let's check in on college football real quick. Things aren't so great in Madison.
Ali Gradischer. Getty Images.
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Wisconsin ended, by my count, a 38-drive touchdown-less streak in their loss vs Oregon last week in the fourth quarter when they were down 21. My code run told me that number of touchdown-less drives was 40, but I spot-checked the drives listed on ESPN and see 38 so might need to look deeper into what accounts for the difference some other time. Whatever. I show this tops even a school like Navy, who topped out at 37-touchdown less drives this season. Even Iowa's longest drought was around 20.
Let's pivot to the NBA because Victor Wembanyama has started this season playing to the level everyone dreamed his potential would be at the height of his career. It's just insane. I don't think any other stat out there can exemplify it better than this graphic below.
You know what though? Let's keep Wemby in check. Because sure, James has the most points scored in league history, Curry with threes made, and Olajuwon with rebounds. But you'd be led to believe from this graphic that Karl Malone then must lead NBA history in blocks. Not even close. That'd be Wilt. Karl is 7th. In fact, he doesn't even lead "Malones" in career rebounds as Moses has him covered by over 1,000.
So take that, Wemby. You're alright. But let's stay humble. Let me know if you need me to say that louder so you can hear me way up there.
Eminem once said they forgot about Dray. So Draymond Green has now made that literally impossible. Where to start? Well, I guess at the beginning. I bet you didn't know he is now your back-to-back "First technical foul getter of the season" in the NBA to make three total in his career. And he did it this year while not even playing!
5:22 left in the first quarter of the first game was all he lasted this year. You better believe I ran the numbers across the entire play-by-play available era to see who was the first to crack each year. Shout out Draymond for at least lasting deep into the second quarter last season for the league's first tech.
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And while it's only been a week into the season, it wouldn't be his last. He was called for technical on a hard foul that led to Santi Aldama pretty blatantly pretending he got hit by a bus. And when ball didn't lie and the faker missed both free throws, we were treated with one of the funniest things I've unexpectedly seen on a basketball court.
Look. When someone puts on Lord of the Dance on max volume, you can't blame the legs for getting into character. Not the case in this situation I suppose, but I could watch this 100 times and genuinely laugh through them all.
Not quite done yet on Draymond. He would go on his podcast and blast Aldama for flopping and losing self-respect. I couldn't agree with him more but I'd just as soon expect Terry Rozier to post something about playing with pride and finishing the game strong even if you're losing.
I had a few more things I was going to try to dig into, but ran out of time. Thanks a lot Draymond! Catch me back next week. Bring your coffee.
Weird / dumb stat leads or questions send to:
Catch up on last week's Sports Staturday: